The Cygnet and the Firebird

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  But the firebird had attacked Rad. Brand had named him the maker of the spell.

  Meguet had tried to protect Rad from Draken.

  Rad knew who had cast the spell. He had been there.

  She felt her body shocked into visibility; even in the steam, her skin was cold.

  No witnesses, Draken had said. No one else saw, but he and his son and Rad.

  Three leaves. One blue as Brand’s eyes. One gold as the Luxour. One as red as the black war-dragon’s eyes.

  She whispered, “Draken.”

  As if she had summoned him, he began to shape himself out of the mists in front of her.

  She ran before he had a face. But his mind’s eye saw her and the random path she had pulled from Chrysom’s book. He pursued her, a single burning dragon’s eye in the dark, a force like night-wind at her heels. He could, she remembered with horror, forge his own paths, not from place to place perhaps, but from here to nowhere. As quickly as she shaped Chrysom’s path, he reshaped it, cutting through her weave of silver, leaving her on an edge of nothing, or turning her own path back on itself, until she lost all sense of Chrysom’s design, and guessed that the path she fled down would loop through itself to lead her inevitably, strand by shifted, twisted strand, to the Dragon of Saphier.

  In desperation she opened another path, and then another, flowing away from that. She shaped a third, a fourth, flinging them into the dark, and running without knowing what dragons waited at their endings. She opened others, sending filaments of silver like crazed nets to catch a drifting moment and open it. She gave Draken no time to alter them before she spun another, sent it branching away into the unknown. Finally, she opened two that, by some luck, were so close they seemed almost indistinguishable. She fled down one, leaving Draken to snarl the other until he wove it through itself and then found he had trapped nothing.

  So she hoped. The path she followed remained true to Chrysom’s pattern. She had no idea where it led; there could be no worse, she reasoned, than the dragon hunting her. When the path ended, she closed it behind her, let it fade back into possibility, and then into a dream that only Chrysom’s key would bring to life. Stranded on some island of time within the Luxour, she turned to face the dragon.

  At first she thought she was alone. She stood at the mouth of a cave so massive even her mage’s eye could not find walls or ceiling. But she smelled earth, wet stone, heard the slow drip and trickle of water. She took a step forward, sensed something where her eye saw only air. Tentatively, she let her thoughts flow around it: It might have been the ghost of stone that had once filled the cave. As she had with Chrysom’s tiny jars, she let her mind drop into it.

  She seemed, for an instant, made of light, as if the sun burned behind her eyes, and all her bones were lucent and bright as fire. She could not speak or think; she was as formless and bright as air at noon in the Luxour. Then the sun blinked, and she felt cold stone beneath her face, her body, and realized she had fallen. She pulled herself up, shaking, stunned, blind, waiting for the pain to begin, the punishment for touching fire. But she felt only the cool breath of the cave. She opened her eyes finally, and saw the dragon.

  Its shadow had been burned into her mind, it seemed; her eye shaped a darkness against the dark. The heavy bulk of its head loomed above her; it could have swallowed her and scarcely noticed. Its huge eyes glittered faintly, flecks of light as colorless as stars. Its voice filled the cave or her head, slow, ancient, dry, dust blowing across dust.

  “Who are you?”

  Her own voice sounded small, trembling in the vastness. “I’m sorry—”

  “Answer.”

  “Nyx Ro. A mage. I came—I was running—I didn’t see you. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  She heard its breath, long and endless. “Nyx Ro. Running. From where? To where? Answer.”

  “I was running away. From another mage.”

  “What mage?”

  “Draken Saphier.”

  She had no idea what those words might mean to it: The act of running would not occur to it, and she could not imagine anything it would be compelled to run from. A great nostril, vague and colorless, expanded slightly; she heard a hiss from it. “When humans run, they run from the greater to the lesser fear. They do not run down the spider webs of time where unknown dragons wait. How did you find me? Answer.”

  “I have a book of paths—”

  “You did not make them.”

  “No.”

  “I eat paths of the makers I dislike.” It seemed to shift. A hollow echo rolled through the cave; light sparked as its scales dragged across stone. Still she could not see its color. She swallowed.

  “You eat power.”

  “I dislike minor annoyances.”

  She made a movement, half a step. “I won’t disturb—” Black moons sculpted out of the dark descended behind her, slid together and locked. She stood ringed by dragon-claws, and wondered if some of the minor annoyances it ate were human. She said carefully, “I would not make much of a meal. You have already terrified me. Your power is like the Luxour’s, ancient and unimaginable. You don’t need to threaten me, any more than the sun needs to threaten. I must get back to the Luxour. Those I love are in terrible danger. If there is a price I must pay for disturbing you, just tell me.”

  It made another sound, a faint, distant rumble. “Who disturbs the Luxour? Answer.”

  “Draken Saphier. And his mages.”

  An eyelid descended; stars vanished, reappeared. “A dust storm. A random shift of rock. The Luxour will survive that.”

  “Yes.” Her voice shook again. “But Brand Saphier may not. And Ro Holding may not—”

  “Human names. Human dreams.”

  “That’s all I know. That’s what I am. I have no dragons’ time for loving. While I stand here in your hold I am disturbing you, and those I love might cease to exist. Please let me go. Tell me what I must do. I will leave you in peace; you’ll never see me again. Please.”

  “You woke me. Nyx Ro. Weaving my secret path out of mages’ fire.”

  “Destroy the path behind me,” she said desperately. “I don’t have the power to make such things, only to follow them.

  “Who does make them? Answer.”

  “He is dead.”

  “Who else?”

  “No one.”

  “Why have you come here? What petty breath of storm across the Luxour sends humans running in fear beyond time? Answer.”

  She drew breath, held it, feeling as if its thoughts had looped back through themselves, trapping her within some answerless question. There was no place where she could hide herself from its bright, relentless eye. It would burn the leaves of Chrysom’s book inside her mind; it could turn her bones to gold and hoard them until trees grew on the Luxour. She searched for an answer it had not already heard, and remembered at last the word for what she fought.

  “The dragon’s son,” she said.

  The dragon was silent. She waited a moment or two, listening, before she realized that the black around her held no more subtle shades of dark, nor did the stillness hold more questions. She turned, trembling again, and opened Chrysom’s book to fashion a simpler path back to the Luxour.

  - Sixteen -

  Rad Ilex took one step onto the Luxour from his time-path and vanished. Meguet, looking for him wildly in the moonlight, saw winds, shimmering veils of dark and silver, swirl around her. She closed her eyes and heard Rad’s voice.

  “Meguet.”

  “What?” she said tersely. She opened her eyes, saw nothing now but the vast, wind-swept desert.

  “I’ve made you invisible.” For a moment, she was afraid to move; she stared rigidly ahead, lest she look down and find she stood on nothing. “Don’t be afraid,” he added. “You can see yourself. I can see you.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “Wait.”

  Slowly he shaped himself out of air and night; she saw the strange winds glide over him. He said softly when his
face became more than a blank shadow, “I’m using the power of the Luxour to do this. It’s a turbulent force all across the desert. Draken will have trouble isolating me from it.”

  “What causes it?”

  “The dragons, I think. They breathe power; they dream it; it escapes from all their private worlds into the desert. I can disguise myself in it. But hiding you will be more difficult. Look.”

  She looked down and saw a moon-shadow the strange power had shaped, that clung to her invisible heel: a black swan, its wings outstretched. She swallowed drily. The shadow peeled away, flew into the wind.

  “Will he see—”

  “I don’t know. The magic creates itself constantly, especially when it responds to other sources of power.” She stopped searching the night for the shadow of the Cygnet, and met his eyes. “I can hide from Draken Saphier. Perhaps I can hide you. But you cannot hide from the Luxour.”

  He was worried, she realized, and with reason; she felt the ground drop away again, as if she stood on nothing. “It’s a power,” she heard herself say, “that rouses only in defense of the Cygnet. When Ro Holding itself is in grave danger.”

  She saw his grim face tighten. “Now?” he demanded incredulously. “In the middle of the Luxour with a hundred mages and Draken Saphier alert for any hint of power?”

  “If Draken threatens Ro Holding, or Nyx in such a way that Ro Holding itself is threatened, then by my heritage I must fight for the Cygnet. Even on the Luxour. Even against a hundred mages.”

  Another shadow formed, broke away from her: a black rose. She heard his breath. “How were you trained? And by whom?”

  “No one,” she said simply, “I was born, I am the Cygnet’s eye, its hand. At such times. Now, I’m only a woman in a desert in the dead of night, facing danger without even a sword.”

  “A sword. You saw how much use that was to you in Chrysom’s tower.”

  “I know. But it would make me feel better.”

  “If I could risk it, I would make you a hundred swords. But if you raise a weapon against the warrior-mages bearing the ritual blades, they will fight back. They are fast, ruthless, efficient. You saw what Brand could do. And he’s not even a mage.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide. “They lied to me.”

  “Who?”

  “The warrior-mages. They said the dance was only ritual. I didn’t believe them and they knew it.”

  “They are preparing for war. They don’t care where. They want to experiment with an attack through time: an army of mages and warriors and dragons that can appear and disappear seemingly out of nowhere. Ro Holding is as good a place as any to begin.”

  She stared blindly at the ground, trying to think. “We must find Nyx.”

  “And that key, before Draken does. I can hide it forever from him among the dragons.”

  “They will still have time-paths,” she said starkly. “Who will hide Ro Holding?”

  He shook his head, scanning the desert. She saw nothing move in the moonlight but dust; they might have been the only people on the Luxour. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Can you find some water? With your face like that, you look already dead.”

  “Oh.” He touched it; the dark mask of blood and dust vanished. His own face, taut with weariness and pain, was no more comforting. He stood silently, letting his mind wander, she guessed, for a long time. He seemed to draw strength from the desert’s power, calm from the ancient, unchanging mountains; his face eased a little as he contemplated the thing he loved. He stirred finally; she said,

  “Now what?”

  “There are a dozen mages prowling nearby, but neither Draken nor Nyx.”

  “I don’t see anything,” she said, shaken. “Can they see us?”

  “I can’t see them either. But I can tell the difference between a warrior-mage’s power, and the Luxor’s. That’s what keeps me safe. To them, I am another random thought of the Luxour.”

  “And what am I?”

  “In danger,” he said. “Let’s search among the stones and pools; it would be easier for her to hide there than out here.”

  They emerged from another silver path onto the banks of a steaming waterfall that poured down steps it had carved in stone washed with all the colors of opal. Rad was silent, searching again, Meguet guessed, while the damp, cloying mist billowed around them and away, finding nothing of them to cling to. She heard Rad breathe finally,

  “I think she’s here. . . .” Then he vanished again within his thoughts, Meguet watched the colors in the water swirl, form a reflection of her face. The reflection slid leaflike down the steps before it broke apart. A warrior-mage appeared out of nowhere, stared into the water. He turned abruptly, searched the mist. Meguet, not daring to breathe, turned her thoughts to steam, stone, crystal. Then the mist itself leaped at him, poured, burning, into his mouth as he drew breath to scream. He fell backward into the scalding water and followed Meguet’s reflection into deeper water. Meguet saw a silver path begin to form in the air above him, break apart as he sank. One of his ritual blades spun out of the water, snagged on the crystals along the bank. She eyed it, but seemed oddly incapable of moving.

  She heard Rad’s whisper close to her ear, and started. “I found Brand, The firebird. But I can’t find Draken.”

  She allowed herself to move finally, tried to touch him. “Let’s find Nyx. She must go home. She won’t leave until she knows where I am.”

  “She won’t leave without you,” he said, startled.

  “I must stay. I can’t hide behind the walls of Ro House and wait for Draken Saphier to bring his war there. If I must fight, I must fight here.”

  “You’ll die,” he said incredulously.

  “Either here, or in Ro Holding. As I would have died defending Chrysom’s tower, if Draken Saphier had come to steal that key instead of you. It’s my heritage.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” he snapped, but no more, for the mists, snatching at Meguet’s thoughts, whirled into a high white tower covered with what, at first glance, seemed to be red roses, but which changed, to Meguet’s horror, into the black dragon’s malevolent, flame-red eyes. They looked everywhere, the eyes of Draken Saphier; they saw through mist, through Rad’s spell, through her mind into the Cygnet’s eye. . . . “Come,” Rad said, gripping her. She could not move. He pulled her roughly away from the image, and down another silver path.

  Here they were surrounded by bubbling pools; even the mud spoke. Meguet could scarcely see the wall of yellow rock rising above the mud-pools, which she might have touched with the point of a broadsword. She waited while Rad searched the place; his thoughts came back to her.

  “You must leave,” he breathed. “You’ll kill us both.”

  “Then leave me.”

  “No.”

  “Were they real?” she asked. “The dragon-eyes?”

  “One might have been. Draken knows how to play with the Luxour’s power. But only as a man with one finger knows how to play a flute. I still can’t find him. Finding him will be dangerous enough, but it’s far more dangerous not knowing where he is.”

  “Hide,” she suggested after a moment. “I’ll bring him to you.”

  He looked at her darkly, but said only, “You’ll do that soon enough as it is. I want the key first. And then you and Nyx Ro out of Saphier. Then I want Draken Saphier. In that order.”

  She did not bother to answer. She saw something move in the solid wall of yellow stone. Mist, she thought, a trickle of water. But something made her reach out to grip Rad, warn him silent. Her fingers closed on nothing; he had vanished even to her eye. The crack shifting became a crack in the stone. The crack widened as she stared. Then the face of the rock tore like paper and a dozen warrior-mages emerged.

  She was surrounded in an instant; their whirling blades spun, plunged into the ground around her, elongating into a high, deadly cage so tight she cut her forearm, turning. The teasing desert gave one blade swans on its hilt, down its blade; she reached for it de
sperately. It snapped silver light, numbing her hand. She stumbled back, cut her shoulder on another blade. She caught her balance desperately, stood trembling while the mages appeared and disappeared into the mists, searching for Rad Ilex.

  The ground around her turned to boiling mud. It swallowed the mages’ blades, along with one mage who, leaping for Meguet, turned visible in midair as a wave of mud flung itself up and shaped him before it slapped him down. Steam blew everywhere, glittered with fine grains of silver and gold. Meguet, feeling a hand close on her wrist, pulled against it. It pulled harder; the silver grains snaked into a pattern around them. The pattern shattered like glass. She heard Rad cry out; the grip on her wrist slackened, tightened again. Light flashed, bright and painful as a flashing mirror; the island she stood on melted beneath her. She had no time to scream before she was dragged into mud. Like the mist, it found nothing of her to grasp. Silver wove in the murk; she could see again suddenly, as the mud pool faded. Still Rad remained invisible. Or was it Rad? she wondered suddenly, panicked. Was it Draken Saphier instead, leading her down the time-path? She pulled free abruptly; a flock of tiny swans formed themselves out of the silver path, soared upward, flew in a ring around her. She stopped, tense, her eyes wide, searching nothing.

  “Meguet.”

  It was Nyx. The swans scattered at the word, turned back into silver. Nyx appeared a moment later, pale, and dishevelled, her eyes full of color, but, to Meguet’s eye, unharmed. Nyx took a deep breath, closed her eyes. “Meguet,” she said again. “What a place to find you in. A lake of boiling mud.”

  “Nyx.” She felt, saying the name, as helpless as she had ever been in her life, finding the heir to Ro Holding underground in a strange country, while a deadly storm of magic raged above their heads. “Do you have any idea what kind of danger you’re in?”